Guidance services for transportation passengers include a conventional in-car announcement and color-based guidance information, provided in a station and a stop, that helps passengers to identify the number of a station or a stop displayed in a graphic, whose color is predetermined for each line, so that they can instantly know where they are. Another service widely used today is an electric bulletin board installed in a car for guidance. In particular, the widespread use of a wide-field, low profile display enables rich content to be provided. Because this display is effective especially in a crowded car or for hearing-impaired persons, the passenger transportation companies compete for introducing this type of display to provide better services than those of others.
Passengers, who use transpiration in an unfamiliar area or who use an unfamiliar transportation line, must be careful about where they should leave the train, how long it will take, and how much the fare is and they are sometimes feel uneasy. As a result, passengers cannot pass a comfortable time in a car in some cases. In addition, even in the frequently used transportation, passengers sometimes ride past their destination; for example, when they concentrate on reading or composing mail messages or have a chat with fellow passengers, they fail to notice the station plate or the scenery seen from a car window.
In view of the foregoing, some passenger guidance methods, which use a personal portable information terminal such as a mobile phone, are proposed. For example, Japanese Patent Kokai Publication No. JP-P2002-300634A discloses a mobile communication terminal notification system for railway passengers. In this system, the user uses a communication terminal, in advance, to send a message reception condition and registers it with a communication network server via the information processing system of the train. When the location of the communication terminal and the location of train satisfy the message reception condition, the user receives the message notification signal. Japanese Patent Kokai Publication No. JP-P2002-114149A also discloses a device that combines the transportation line network database, the transportation route search server, and the transportation route derivation server to provide guidance information to the transportation users.
[Patent Document 1]
Japanese Patent Kokai Publication No. JP-P2002-300634A
[Patent Document 2]
Japanese Patent Kokai Publication No. JP-P2002-114149A